2012 keynote at CES will be Microsoft’s last [Updated]

Say goodbye to thrilling moments such as this, now that Microsoft will quit doing CES keynotes starting in 2013.

When Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer takes to the stage at CES in January in Las Vegas, it will be for the last time. After CES 2012, the software giant will no longer have its traditional event-opening keynote address.

· Are we doing something because it’s the right thing to do, or because “it’s the way we’ve always done it”?

After thinking about questions like these, we have decided that this coming January will be our last keynote presentation and booth at CES. We’ll continue to participate in CES as a great place to connect with partners and customers across the PC, phone and entertainment industries, but we won’t have a keynote or booth after this year because our product news milestones generally don’t align with the show’s January timing.

But Microsoft has long cast a massive shadow over CES, and the Comdex trade show before it. When he was still CEO, co-founder Bill Gates’ show-opening keynotes were the stuff of legend. Here’s a video offered from his final keynote in 2008, just before he retired as chief executive:

Microsoft is making a decision very similar to the one Apple made when it opted to no longer participate in Macworld Expo, the trade show devoted to Apple’s products that happens around the same time as CES. Apple said Macworld was no longer the best place or time to showcase its wares.

Attending and staging these big shows are incredibly expensive, both in terms of cash and human resources. Companies like Dell, Microsoft an Apple know there are better ways to spend their money.

And if more companies make similar decisions, CES could go the way of Comdex, which imploded in 2004.

By the way, I won’t be attending CES in January. I’ll stay home and aggregate the best coverage I find right here on TechBlog.

The Consumer Electronics Association, the industry trade group that puts on C.E.S., said the change had been a mutual decision. In an interview, Jason Oxman, senior vice president of industry affairs at the group, said it invited companies to deliver keynote speeches at the convention, not the other way around. Mr.Oxman said the group felt it was time for a new company to deliver the opening keynote since Microsoft held the spot for the last 14 years.

He said the association and Microsoft met in recent months and decided to part ways on the convention.

“From our standpoint, it was the right decision as well,” Mr. Oxman said.